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The Ale That Men Brew: Iron Maiden Serves Up A Beer

Bill Chappell

Three decades after giving the world The Number of the Beast, Iron Maiden is poised to release its latest work and it's a beer. That's the latest from the Metal Injection website, whose "Bands and Booze" section makes it uniquely qualified to present such news.

The band collaborated with Robinsons, an English brewery with roots in the 19th century, to create what lead singer Bruce Dickinson calls "our special secret-squirrel recipe for Trooper Ale." Robinsons is also well-known for making ales such as Old Tom and Unicorn.

"As a fan of traditional English cask beer, I thought this could actually be something really exciting," Dickinson says in a video announcing the beer's pending release. "We could actually develop a proper, real, long-term beer."

By that, he seems to mean that the beer will be more than a limited-edition release. Dickinson says that when they were trying to figure out what to put on the beer's label, it seemed natural to use the title of the Maiden song "The Trooper."

"Music and beer are great treats for the senses in their own right," the brewery's Oliver Robinson says, "but the combination is very powerful."

The beer, described as having citrus notes and a blend of Cascade, Bobec, and Goldings hops, doesn't sport an amped-up alcohol percentage. Its website currently lists it at 4.7 percent alcohol by volume.

That prompted a commenter at Metal Injection to observe the alcohol level should be much higher leading another reader, Colin James Salt, to respond that the proper strength would be "6.66%."